Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 133

Cloning Around: A Dentist’s Quest to Make a New John Lennon

This story was not “imagined” by a “paperback writer.” It’s the honest tooth.

Sometime between 1964 and 1968 (she doesn’t remember when), housekeeper Dot Jarlett was given an extracted molar by her boss, John Lennon. Lennon asked her to throw it away for him, but then jokingly suggested she keep the tooth instead and give it to her daughter, a huge Beatles fan.

In 2011, Omega Auction House acquired it from that lucky Beatles fan and sold it at auction. They expected it to sell for about 9,000 pounds, or around $16,000, which would have been an absurd amount to pay for an old tooth. Omega didn’t get that amount for it—it brought in nearly double, 19,000 pounds, or around $31,200.

The buyer was a Canadian dentist named Dr. Michael Zuk. Why’d he buy it? Zuk describes himself as a huge Beatles fan, but that’s an understatement considering what he wants to do with the tooth. He is prepared to spend however much it takes to extract Lennon’s DNA from the tooth, “fully sequence” it, and then make a clone of John Lennon.

Two things are holding back Zuk’s plans: cloning science is to the point where a cat or a sheep can be cloned, but not a human. Also, the tooth is so old and so fragile that it was too brittle to be subjected to DNA extraction tests. Zuk is confident that neither of these factors will matter much in the near future. “With researchers working on ways to clone mammoths, the same technology certainly could make human cloning a reality,” Zuk told reporters, referring to a dubious report by Russian scientists.

In the meantime, Zuk is letting the tooth out of his sight. In August 2012, he allowed his sister to break off a piece of the tooth (presumably one without much precious DNA in it) and use it in an art project—a clay sculpture of John Lennon. The sculpture toured England to raise awareness of mouth cancer.

As for the future Lennon clone, Zuk plans to raise him like a son. He says he’d make him fully aware of his legacy (“guitar lessons wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?”), but introduce some changes, too. “He would still be his exact duplicate, but you know, hopefully keep him away from drugs and cigarettes,” Zuk told England’s Channel 4.

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Bill Cosby’s Fabulous Flops

NBC recently announced that Bill Cosby will return to TV in 2015 with a new sitcom. Will it be closer to a classic like The Cosby Show, or will it be largely forgotten…like these Bill Cosby flops?

You Bet Your Life

One of the reasons why Cosby ended The Cosby Show in 1992 (when it was still a top 20 show) was a desire to do new things. The first thing he did was a syndicated revival of Groucho Marx’s classic comic game show You Bet Your Life. The original was driven largely by Marx’s personality and persona, and even Cosby couldn’t fill those shoes…at least among viewers who could remember the show from more than 30 years earlier. The revival was gone in under a year.

The Cosby Mysteries

A light detective drama with elements of comedy, The Cosby Mysteries debuted on NBC in January 1994 after a highly-rated made-for-TV movie. About a lottery winner who solves mysteries, it was created by former Columbo and Murder, She Wrote writers who Cosby had commissioned to create a non-violent detective show. Airing opposite the popular Roseanne on ABC and Beverly Hills, 90210 on Fox, The Cosby Show not-so-mysteriously vanished after 18 episodes.

Cosby

Cosby wasn’t a failure, but it wasn’t the giant hit CBS thought it was going to be either. In 1996 the network announced that it had signed Cosby to return to episodic television for the first time since The Cosby Show ended in 1992. CBS, anxious that Cosby would flee to another network, allowed him to make whatever show he wanted, with whoever he wanted, and a guaranteed run of at least two years—an unprecedented concession. Instead of a bright family show, Cosby produced Cosby, a remake of One Foot in the Grave, a dark British sitcom about a cranky retiree. The show debuted to huge ratings in Sept. 1996, but by its fourth and final season in 2000, Cosby was the #82 show on TV.

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The World’s Worst Star Wars Exhibit

The Star Wars saga has spawned comic books, video games, toys…and a terrible exhibition in Leipzig.

Until recently, the German city was hosting “Space Expo” at its old fairgrounds. Instead of offering visitors interactive kiosks or props from the films, the touring exhibit consists of a series of halfhearted displays put together by a group of people that likely know next to nothing about Star Wars.

In addition to old mannequins dressed in costumes that sort of look like the ones Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford wore in the original trilogy, there’s what appears to be a very old teddy bear riding a dirt bike. Our best guess? That’s supposed to be an Ewok. Another display features a large Millennium Falcon model perched beside a sagging NASA spacesuit.

Elsewhere, a disembodied Chewbacca head rests on a table. The poor Wookie’s cranium looks a bit more like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. The exhibit’s R2D2 receives the poorest treatment and looks like it was literally built out of a trashcan. The exhibit’s Princess Leia is a bit more presentable. Her mannequin can be seen lounging in the character’s iconic metal bikini from Return of the Jedi.

Space Expo’s press materials claim that it offers “interesting and fascinating facts for both old and young,” in addition to “laser sword workshops.” The admission fee runs  €10 (about $13.50). As strange as it might sound, the exhibit is apparently successful enough to warrant touring. It previously set up shop in Wolfsburg and a few other German cities. Photos of the exhibit appeared on a German blog a few weeks ago and they quickly went viral. After receiving tons of backlash and ridicule online, the curators decided to close up shop

There’s also the possibility that the expo is heading to your town next.

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A Short History of the Elephant Ear

This fried treat can be found in about every carnival, fair, and rodeo you’ll hit this summer. But who first came up with this summertime favorite of many names? Canadians.

Once upon a time, a beaver’s tail was a common meal for fur trappers and pioneers in the Great White North. While the tail wasn’t the tastiest part, it was plentiful, and cooks did with them what they could. One choice was “beavertail beans.” According to Buckskin Cookery, a cookbook on how to recreate 19th century Canadian frontier dishes, it’s made by placing the fire over an open fire until the skin loosens. After removing the skin, the meat of the tail is boiled in a big kettle of beans, and then served.

Somewhere along the line, “beaver tail” also became associated with a recipe for a type of fried, sweetened dough that was easily prepared over a campfire. Because it was originally cooked in a frying pan, the end result wound up looking flat and wide, just like the tail of a certain aquatic rodent. It dates back to at least the late 19th Century, mentioned in Explorations in the Far North, an 1898 book by adventurer Frank Russell.

Since then, the beaver tail has become a snack that’s enjoyed year-round up north. There’s even a popular chain of pastry stands called BeaverTails, with locations in Canada, the U.S., and even Japan. During a diplomatic trip to Ottawa in 2009, President Obama enjoyed one.

They’re better known as elephant ears in America but they’re also sometimes called flying saucers and doughboys. Depending on where you get one, they come with tons of sugar and cinnamon or with toppings ranging from whipped cream to maple syrup and even tomato sauce.

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Fact-or-Fake Friday: When Reality and Art Collide

Here are three stories about the fine line between reality and fiction and what happens when that line is crossed. However: two of them are totally real, and one is complete fiction. Can you guess which one we made up? Answers at the end of the post.

A.

The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks tracked the decades-long struggle of Walt Disney trying to convince prickly Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers into letting him make a movie of the beloved children’s book. Travers ultimately relented, but hated the movie so much she barred Disney from ever adapting one her book’s many sequels. Saving Mr. Banks was based on a nonfiction book by British author Sue Smith, a close friend of Travers. Walt Disney Pictures had been trying to get Smith to sell the rights to Banks since 1978, fearing the company would ruin her book the way Travers thought it had ruined hers. (Smith died in 2012; her kids sold the rights off.)

B.

Bernie was a 2011 film about Bernie Tiede, a pillar of the community in Carthage, Texas, who in 1996 confessed to the surprising murder his wealthy companion, 81-year-old Marjorie Nugent. The film shed new light on Tiede’s case, and citing new evidence, released Tiede with time served. One of the conditions of his release was that someone vouch for and look after him. That person: Bernie director and co-writer Richard Linklater. Tiede currently resides in an apartment off Linklater’s home, and works as a paralegal.

C.

Before Borat and Bruno, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was best known for his character Ali G, an incredibly dimwitted, low-class man obsessed with hip-hop culture from the English city of Staines. On his show Da Ali G show, Cohen-as-Ali G referred to Staines as a “s*******.” Ali G became so popular, and Staines became such a punchline, that the city has since changed its name to distance itself from the ridicule. It’s now known as “Staines-Upon-Thames.”

Want more fake facts? Then check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)

 

 

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The MTV VMA For Best New Artist Goes To…Who?

MTV used the relatively new technology of Snapchat to announce the nominees for this year’s Video Music Awards. It’s good to see MTV embrace the new, especially since the acts it has nominated for Best New Artist at the VMAs frequently don’t have very lengthy careers.

The Eurythmics were a popular and acclaimed band (“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”) in 1984, but they won the Best New Artist award over Madonna. (Other nominees: Cyndi Lauper and Wang Chung.)


Norwegian one-hit-wonder a-ha won the prize in 1985, beating out fellow flash-in-the-pans acts such as the Hooters, Simply Red…and some pop singer named Whitney Houston.


Guns N’ Roses deservedly won out in 1988, beating the Godfathers, Swing Out Sister, and former New York Dolls singer David Johansen’s lounge singer novelty act “Buster Poindexter.”


Remember the hard rock group Living Coulor? They beat Paula Abdul for Best New Artist in 1989.


A whopping seven acts were nominated in the category in 1990. The only one who proved to have any staying power was Lenny Kravitz. He lost to Michael Penn (brother of Sean Penn and husband of Aimee Mann), Bell Biv DeVoe, Jane Child, and Alannah Myles.


The 1991 nominees were C+C Music Factory, Deee-Lite, Gerardo, Seal, and winner Jesus Jones.


In 1998, Australian soap star and one-hit-wonder Natalie Imbruglia (“Torn”) beat one-hit-wonder swing revivalists the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (“Zoot Suit Riot”), one-hit-wonder British band Chumbawamba (“Tubthumping”), alternative rock two-hit-wonders Fastball (“The Way”), and rapper Ma$e, who shortly thereafter after quit music to become a minister.


Then and current stars Christina Aguilera and Pink were both nominated. Both lost to Macy Gray.


Rihanna is arguably the biggest pop star of the day. In 2006, she lost the VMA for Best New Artist to a heavy metal band called Avenged Sevenfold.


At the 2007 Video Music Awards, rap-rock group Gym Class Heroes beat Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse.


MTV opened up voting to fans online in 2008. That meant that the heavily organized fanbase of Tokio Hotel, a weird German art rock band beat such stars as Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift.

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Impossible Questions: They’re Not Booing, They’re Saying “Bruuuuuuce” (The Answer)

Think you’ve got the answer? Keep reading to see if you nailed it.

What bizarre superlative can be applied to the entirety of the film career of former Olympic athlete and current reality TV star Bruce Jenner?

Maybe they are “booing” poor Bruce.

Apart from some made-for-TV movies in the early 1980s and filling in for Erik Estrada during a contract dispute on CHiPs, Bruce Jenner appeared in just two movies that were released in movie theaters. Both of them were critically drubbed…so much so that both of Jenner’s films won the Razzie Award for Worst Picture.

In 1976, Jenner became hugely famous for winning the decathlon at the Summer Olympics, an event that been dominated by the Soviet Union for years. Jenner earned the title of “world’s greatest athlete,” appeared on a Wheaties box, and met President Ford. He was one of the most admired young men in America. He capitalized on that fame by dabbling in acting. He reportedly auditioned for the lead role in Superman, and took a part in the 1980 film Can’t Stop the Music. It was a musical—a disco musical—starring Steve Guttenberg and…the Village People. The film was a failure and it was so bad that after publicist John J.B. Wilson saw it on a double bill with another musical, Xanadu, he was inspired to start the Golden Raspberry Awards, or Razzies, to annually “honor” terrible movies. Can’t Stop won Worst Picture; Jenner was nominated for Worst Actor (he lost to Neil Diamond in The Jazz Singer).

Jenner returned to public consciousness in 2005 as part of the cast of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a show on E! that followed around his wife, Kris, and her daughters from her marriage to attorney Robert Kardashian (who helped win O.J. Simpson an acquittal for murder). Once again, Jenner turned his fame into a movie role, appearing in Adam Sandler’s 2010 comedy Jack and Jill in a cameo appearance as himself, as an actor in a play. In 2011, Jack and Jill, in which Sandler played identical twins, one male and one female, won the Razzie for Worst Picture.

Need more impossible questions? Check out Uncle John’s Impossible Questions.

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The Weirdest Place in Portugal

We recently told you about some really creepy places in Venice and Transylvania . Your turn to freak us out, Portugal.

The hillside estate of Quinta da Regaleira can be found in Sintra, Portugal, a town that sits smack dab in the middle of a region known for all sorts of kooky stuff, particularly unexplained rock formations and secretive cults. Perhaps oddest of all is a solitary cloud that hangs over the Pena National Palace even on clear days. The locals call it “The Queen’s Fart.

But things were pretty boring up at Quinta da Regaleira until 1892. That’s when a mysterious businessman named Carvalho Monteiro purchased the centuries-old estate. The wealthy Monteiro was a well-known eccentric that loved to collect rare books and was obsessed with world religions. After he got the keys, he quickly purchased all the surrounding property.

Then Monteiro hired Luigi Manini, one of Portugal’s top architects, to redesign both the estate’s villa and the area surrounding it. The architect plopped some creepy gargoyles on top of the house, one of which includes a pretty scary looking bunny rabbit. Inside, he installed a library with mirrors in the floor that create the illusion that its shelves go on forever. Manini and his crew theno spent the following six years turning the surrounding hills into a gorgeous, but incredibly strange, garden filled with references to everything from the Knights Templar to Roman gods along with tons of other weird features. They dug several underground tunnels that led to nowhere and installed one of Portugal’s first aquariums in the far corner of the estate.

Along with grottoes and castle-like observation towers, Manini’s workers also built two wells. But instead of filling “The Initiation Wells” with water, they added ornate staircases. If you’re thinking they might have been used for odd ceremonies, well, you’re correct. Once the finishing touches were in place, Monteiro spent the next several years hosting weird parties at the estate.

Nobody really knows what all Monteiro was up to out there. He passed away in 1920 and Quinta da Regaleira was eventually sold to the city of Sintra in 1997. After some restoration work, officials opened the estate to the public. Almost all of its strange features are still in place and tourists routinely scare themselves silly in the tunnels.

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Fact-or-Fake Friday: Remake Madness

Here are three recent news items pop culture products currently being remade. Well, that’s sort of true—two of the stories are real, and one of them we made up. Can you guess which one is just too weird to be true? (The answer is at the end of the post.)

A.

Cats is one of the most popular musicals of all time, running for 20 years on both Broadway and on London’s West End. Off the boards for more than a decade now, author Andrew Lloyd Webber is preparing the first major revival of the show about homeless street cats that sing, dance, and now…rap. As rap was a relatively new style when Cats debuted in the early 1980s, Webber believes that the time is now right for the character of Rum Tum Tugger to be rewritten as “a contemporary street cat” who “has to do hip-hop.” Webber claims that the poems of T.S. Eliot, upon which he based Cats, give precedence, claiming that Eliot’s “The Rum Tum Tugger” was “possibly the first rap.

B.

How I Met Your Mother ended a nine-season run on CBS last spring with a highly-anticipated and controversial, fan-hated final episode. (Spoilers: After years of build-up to the meeting and happy ending of Ted and “the mother,” the mother dies off-screen and Ted gets together with Robin, the ex-girlfriend he could never quite get over.) The show’s cast, creators, and network got so much flack—but high ratings—that they worked out a solution. How I Met Your Mother will reboot and begin airing on CBS again this winter with a new cast but roughly the same episode stories, as well as a promise that the show will end “happily.”

C.

TV shows are often remade for different countries around the world. Particularly successful have been localized versions of Married…With Children, Who’s the Boss?, and The Office across Europe and Asia. This summer an unauthorized remake of Modern Family began airing in Iran. Haft Sang (“Seven Stories”) recreated on an almost shot-for-shot basis the ABC family comedy, except for a couple of very big differences. Promiscuous college-age daughter Haley is now a chaste teenage boy, and the gay couple Cam and Mitchell don’t appear in Haft Sang at all.

Want more fake facts? Then check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)

 

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The Wide World of Weird Emmy History

The Emmy Nomination were announced this week and there weren’t many surprises—congratulations once again, cast of Modern Family. Here are a few times when the Emmys got wacky.

Time, among other institutions, once named The Simpsons the greatest TV series of all time. It’s been on the air for 25 years, but has never been able to gain a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series. Only two animated series have ever gotten a nomination: The Flintstones in 1961 and Family Guy in 2009. Neither show won.


In 1981, Ellen Burstyn was nominated for her titular role in the made-for-TV movie The People vs. Jean Harris, about the headmistress who killed Herman Tarnower, the “Scarsdale Diet” doctor. Widely expected to win, Burstyn lost out to Vanessa Redgrave in Playing for Time. In 2006, Emmy voters may have tried to make up for the loss by nominating Burstyn for a supporting role in Mrs. Harris…another movie about Harris and Tarnower. However, Burstyn had just a bit part in Mrs Harris—she appeared on screen for 14 seconds and spoke 38 words of dialogue. Burstyn quipped to a reporter, “Ultimately I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don’t even appear.” (She didn’t win that time either.)


In 1974, the governing American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences tried to mix up the Emmy format a little. In addition to handing out individual awards= in comedies, dramas, and TV movies, they added in “super Emmys,” or awards for overall Actor of the Year, Writer of the Year, etc. For example, Alan Alda won Actor of the Year for M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore won Actress of the Year for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Robert Butler won Director of the Year for the NBC miniseries The Blue Knight. The “super Emmys” were retired after the single outing.


Federal and local laws strictly govern the use of lawn signs for political campaigns—a homeowner can’t be paid to put up a sign for a candidate, for example. It’s not as complicated with Emmy voting. During last year’s Emmy campaign, representatives from Netflix reportedly handed out Netflix and Starbucks gift cards to people in the Los Angeles area—where most Emmy voters live— willing to place a “For Your Consideration” sign on their lawn for Netflix series going for Emmys, such as Arrested Development and House of Cards, which is, ironically, about a cutthroat politician.

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